TODAY IN HISTORY
On May 18, 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.
Also on this date
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept renounced 58 years later by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
In 1910, Halley’s Comet passed by earth, brushing it with its tail.
In 1927, in America’s deadliest school attack, part of a schoolhouse in Bath Township, Michigan, was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a bomb in his truck; the attacks killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who had earlier killed his wife. (Authorities said Kehoe, who suffered financial difficulties, was seeking revenge for losing a township clerk election.)
In 1973, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was appointed Watergate special prosecutor by U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson.
In 1981, the New York Native, a gay newspaper, carried a story concerning rumors of “an exotic new disease” among homosexuals; it was the first published report about what came to be known as AIDS.
In 2015, President Barack Obama ended federal transfers of some combat-style gear to local law enforcement in an attempt to ease tensions between police and minority communities, saying battlefield equipment should not be a tool of American criminal justice.
In 2020, President Donald Trump said he’d been taking a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement to protect against COVID-19 despite warnings from his own government that the drug should be administered only in a hospital or research setting.
Ten years ago: Facebook made its much-anticipated trading debut on Wall Street, but its shares closed up only 23 cents from its initial pricing of $38.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump denounced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his campaign’s potential ties with Russia, repeatedly calling it an unprecedented “witch hunt” that “hurts our country terribly.”
One year ago: The New York attorney general’s office said it was conducting a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business empire, expanding what had previously been a civil probe.